Michael Patrick O'Connor (1950, Lackawanna, New York – June 16, 2007, Silver Spring, Maryland) was an American scholar of the Ancient Near East and a poet. With the field of ANE studies he was a linguist of Semitic languages, with a focus on biblical Hebrew and biblical poetry.[1][2]

Biography

O'Connor received his bachelor's degree in English from the University of Notre Dame in 1970, and a Masters in creative writing from the University of British Columbia in 1972, followed by a Masters in ancient Near Eastern studies (1974) and doctorate in 1978 at the University of Michigan.[2]

After working as a freelance scholar for a number of years, he taught at Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity of the University of St. Thomas then at Union Theological Seminary.[1] In 1997 he joined the faculty of Catholic University of America and was appointed an Ordinary Professor in 2002.[3]

He is best known from his book on the structure of Hebrew verse and his co-authorship of a textbook on biblical Hebrew syntax.[2][4] He proposed that the metre of Hebrew verse was based on constraints in syntax, rather than feet.[5]

He published poems throughout his career, including a book of poetry called Pandary in 1989.[2]

O'Connor was a Catholic, he died of complications of liver cancer on June 16, 2007, at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, MD.[1]

Selected publications

Books

• O'Connor, Michael Patrick (1978). Hebrew Verse Structure, Volume 1. Eisenbrauns. ISBN 9780931464027. OCLC 1024739048. Retrieved 12 January 2015. The 2nd Edition was printed with a new afterword: O'Connor, Michael Patrick (1997). The contours of biblical Hebrew verse: an afterword to Hebrew verse structure. Eisenbrauns. OCLC 42665662.[6]
• O'Connor, Michael Patrick; Waltke, Bruce K. (1990). An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax. Eisenbrauns. p. 765. ISBN 9780931464317.

Edited books

• Meyers, Carol L.; O'Connor, M., eds. (1983). The Word of the Lord shall go forth : essays in honor of David Noel Freedman in celebration of his sixtieth birthday. American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 1. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. ISBN 978-0-931464-19-5. OCLC 781579587.
• O'Connor, Michael Patrick; Freedman, David Noel, eds. (1987). Backgrounds for the Bible. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. ISBN 978-0931464300. OCLC 869179345. Note: Includes essays originally published in Michigan Quarterly Review XXII (3). Summer 1983, a special issue called The Bible and Its Traditions.[7][8][9]
• Menn, Lise; O'Connor, Michael P.; Obler, Loraine K.; Holland, Audrey, eds. (1995). Non-fluent aphasia in a multilingual world. Amsterdam [u.a.]: Benjamins. ISBN 9781556193910.

Papers

• O'Connor, M (1977). "The Grammar of Getting Blessed in Tyrian-Sidonian Phoenician". Rivista di Studi Fenici. 5: 5–11. ISSN 0390-3877.
• O'Connor, M. (1977). "The Rhetoric of the Kilamuwa Inscription". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. 226 (226): 15–29. doi:10.2307/1356572. JSTOR 1356572. S2CID 155257839.
• O'Connor, M (1982). "'Unanswerable the knack of tongues': The linguistic Study of Verse.". In Obler, Loraine K.; Menn, Lise (eds.). Exceptional language and linguistics. New York: Academic Press. pp. 143–168. ISBN 9780125236805.
• O'Connor, M. (1983). "Writing Systems, Native Speaker Analyses, and the Earliest Stages of Northwest Semitic Orthography". In Meyers, Carol L.; O'Connor, M. (eds.). The Word of the Lord shall go forth : essays in honor of David Noel Freedman in celebration of his sixtieth birthday. American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 1. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. ISBN 978-0-931464-19-5. OCLC 781579587.
• O'Connor, M. (1986). "The Arabic Loanwords in Nabatean Aramaic". Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 45 (3): 213–229. doi:10.1086/373188. JSTOR 544859. S2CID 161392170.
• O'Connor, M. (1987). "The Poetic Inscription from Khirbet el-Qôm". Vetus Testamentum. 37 (2): 224–230. doi:10.2307/1517722. JSTOR 1517722.
• O'Connor, Michael Patrick (1987). "Ugarit and the Bible". In O'Connor, Michael Patrick; Freedman, David Noel (eds.). Backgrounds for the Bible. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. pp. 151–164. ISBN 978-0931464300. OCLC 869179345.
• O'Connor, M. (1989). "Semitic *mgn and Its Supposed Sanskrit Origin". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 109 (1): 25–32. doi:10.2307/604334. JSTOR 604334.
• O'Connor, M. (1986). "'I only am escaped alone to tell thee': Native American and Biblical Hebrew Verse". Religion & Intellectual Life. 3: 121–32.
• O'Connor, Michael Patrick (1986). "The Women in the Book of Judges". Hebrew Annual Review. 10: 277–293. hdl:1811/58724.
• O'Connor, Michael Patrick (1987). "Chapter 9: The Pseudosorites: A Type of Paradox in Hebrew Verse". In Follis, Elaine R. (ed.). Directions in Biblical Hebrew Poetry. Supplement Series No. 40. Sheffield, England: JSOT Press. pp. 161–172. ISBN 978-1850750130.
• O'Connor, M (1995). "War and Rebel Chants in the Former Prophets". In Beck, Astrid B.; Bartelt, Andrew H.; Raabe, Paul R.; Franke, Chris A. (eds.). Fortunate the eyes that see : essays in honor of David Noel Freedman in celebration of his seventieth birthday. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. pp. 343–358. ISBN 978-0802838018. OCLC 32465390.
• O'Connor, M. P. (1999). "Biblical Hebrew Lexicography: טף 'Children, Dependents' in Biblical and Qumranic Hebrew". Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages (2): 25–40. (Table of contents with abstracts)
• O'Connor, M.P. (2002). "Semitic Lexicography: European Dictionaries of Biblical Hebrew in the Twentieth Century". In izreʹel, Shlomo (ed.). Semitic linguistics : the state of the art at the turn of the twenty-first century. Israel Oriental Studies, Volume 20. [Winona Lake, Ind.]: Eisenbrauns. ISBN 978-1-57506-059-0.
• O'Connor, M. (2004). "The Onomastic Evidence for Bronze-Age West Semitic". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 124 (3): 439–470. doi:10.2307/4132275. JSTOR 4132275.
• O'Connor, Michael Patrick (2008). "Chapter 1: The Biblical Notion of the City". In Camp, Claudia V.; Berquist, Jon L. (eds.). Constructions of space II : the biblical city and other imagined spaces. The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies No. 490. London: T & T Clark. ISBN 9780567027085. OCLC 234257147.
• O'Connor, MP; Greenstein, E.L. (2012). "Parallelism". In Greene, Roland; Cushman, Stephen (eds.). The Princeton encyclopedia of poetry and poetics (4th. ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 997–999. ISBN 9781400841424.

Reviews

• O'Connor, Michael Patrick (1991). "Review of The Affirming Flame: Religion, Language, Literature". South Central Review. 8 (1): 116–118. doi:10.2307/3189323. JSTOR 3189323.
• O'Connor, Michael P. (1991). "Review of Procedimientos iterativos en la poesía ugarítica y hebrea (BibOr 43)". The Catholic Biblical Quarterly. 53 (3): 486–488. JSTOR 43718306.
• O'Connor, M. (1992). "Review of Studies in Verbal Aspect and Narrative Technique in Biblical Hebrew Prose". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 112 (3): 497–499. doi:10.2307/603094. JSTOR 603094.
• O'Connor, Michael P.; Bouzard, Walter C. (1999). "Review of We Have Heard with Our Ears, O God: Sources of the Communal Laments in the Psalms (SBLDS 159), Walter C. Bouzard, Jr". The Catholic Biblical Quarterly. 61 (4): 737–739. JSTOR 43723712.
• O'Connor, Michael Patrick (1998). "Book Review: Ecclesiastes: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. By Seow C. L., Anchor Bible. New York: Doubleday, 1997" (PDF). Theological Studies. 59 (4): 722–723. doi:10.1177/004056399805900408. S2CID 170849670.
• O'Connor, M. (2003). "Grammatical Concepts 101 for Biblical Hebrew: Learning Biblical Hebrew Grammatical Concepts Through English Grammar (review)". Hebrew Studies. 44 (1): 234–238. doi:10.1353/hbr.2003.0025. S2CID 170163135.
• O'Connor, Michael P. (2001). "Review of "The alphabet versus the goddess: The conflict between word and image" by Leonard Shlain". Written Language & Literacy. 4 (1): 87–95. doi:10.1075/wll.4.1.07oco.
• O'Connor, M. (March 2005). "Hester. Fascicule 1. Introduction". Theological Studies. 66 (1): 224. doi:10.1177/004056390506600136. S2CID 220517504.
• O'Connor, M. (July 2006). "Review: The Empty Men: The Heroic Tradition of Ancient Israel". The Catholic Biblical Quarterly. 68 (3): 521–523. JSTOR 43727597.
• O'Connor, M. (2001). "Review of Biblia Hebraica Leningradensia. Prepared according to the Vocalization, Accents, and Masora of Aaron ben Moses ben Asher in the Leningrad Codex". The Catholic Biblical Quarterly. 63 (4): 716–718. JSTOR 43727261.

Poetry

• O'Connor, Michael Patrick (1989). Pandary : poems. Seattle, WA: L'Epervier Press. ISBN 978-0934332507. OCLC 732345895.
• O'Connor, Michael Patrick (1971). "The News of the World for Therese: 1. The Ideas of August; 2. Two Days Later; 3. Immediately". The Iowa Review. 2 (3): 13. doi:10.17077/0021-065X.1216. JSTOR 20157735.
• O'Connor, Michael Patrick (1973). "The Aphrodite of Melos". The Transatlantic Review (45): 131. JSTOR 41513310.
• O'Connor, Michael Patrick (1984). "Envoi on Our Failure". The Great Lakes Review. 10 (2): 42. doi:10.2307/20172697. JSTOR 20172697.
• O'Connor, Michael Patrick (2009). Field notes: the selected poems of Michael Patrick O'Connor. Patsons Press. ISBN 9780982415115. OCLC 755031166.

References